MY DEAR FRIEND,—H. R. H. the Prince Regent, who starts for England
to-morrow, wishes to see Oxford, and _quietly_ and _instructively_. I
therefore give these lines to his private secretary, Herr Ullmann, that he
may by letter, or (if the time allows) by word of mouth, apply to you, to
fix _a day_. Herr Ullmann is the son of the famous Dr. U., the present
prelate and chief church-councilor, and a man of good intentions.
I have at last gone in for Vedic and Bactrian chronology, after having had
Dr. Haug of Bonn with me for eight days. He translated and read to me many
hymns from your two quartos (which he does very fluently), and a little of
Sâyana’s commentary. By this and by Lassen and Roth, and yours and Weber’s
communications, I believe I have saved myself from the breakers, and I
hold my proofs as established:—
That the oldest Vedas were composed 3000-2500 B. C., and that everything
else is written in a learned dead Brahmanical language, a precipitate of
the Veda language, and certainly _very late_: scarcely anything before 800
B. C.
Manu takes his place after Buddha.
The ages of the world are the miserable system of the book of Manu, and
nothing more than evaporated historical periods. These epochs can be
restored not by the aid, but in spite of the two epics and their
chronology.
Petermann sends me a beautiful map. The routes and settlements of the
Aryans from their primitive home to the land of the five rivers (or rather
seven).
Haug has worked out all the fourteen names. Kabul and Kandahar are hidden
amongst them. I hope he will settle in the autumn with me, and for the
next few years.
In haste, with hearty thanks for your affectionate and instructive
answers. God bless you.
P. S. I shall take the liberty of sending you, about the 1st of July, the
first five sheets of my _Aryans_, before they are printed off, and ten
days later the remaining three or four, and beg for your instructive
remarks on them.
[74.]
CHARLOTTENBERG, _July 17, 1856_.
MY DEARLY LOVED FRIEND,—Yesterday evening at half-past seven o’clock I
wrote off my _last chapter_ of “Egypt’s Place” for press, and so the work
is finished, the first sheets of which were sent to Gotha from London in
1843, the chief part of which however was written in 1838-39. You will
receive the two new volumes (Books IV., V. a) in a fortnight; they will be
published to-day. Of the third volume (the sixth of the German editions),
or V. (b), twelve sheets are printed, and the other eighteen are ready,
except a few sheets already at Gotha, including the index to I. to V. (a).
I am in the main satisfied with the work.
You are the first with whom I begin paying off my debts of correspondence;
and I rejoice that I can take this opportunity to thank you for all the
delightful news which your last dear letter (sent by that most amiable
Muir) conveyed to me; especially for the completion of the _third big
volume of the Rig-veda_, and for the happy arrival of your mother and
cousin, which has doubtless already taken place. You know it was a letter
from the _latter_, which first told me _of you_, and made me wish to see
you. And then you came _yourself_; and all that I prophesied of you after
the first conversation in London and your first visit in the country, has
been richly fulfilled—yes, beyond my boldest hopes. You have won an
honorable position in the first English university, not only for yourself
but for the Fatherland, and you have richly returned the love which I felt
for you from the first moment, and have faithfully reciprocated a
friendship which constitutes an essential portion of my happiness. I
therefore thank you all the more for all the love and friendship of your
last letters. I can only excuse myself _by my book_ for not having sooner
thanked you. I soon perceived that _you were quite right_, that the
chronological researches on Indian antiquity have led to nothing more sure
than the conviction that the earlier views, with few exceptions, were
wrong or without foundation. As soon as I acquired this conviction,
through reading the last works on the subject (Lassen and Roth), I grew
furious, as it happens to me from time to time, and at the same time
reawoke the longing after the researches which I had to lay aside in 1816,
and which I now determined to approach again, in the course of my work,
which is chronological in the widest sense. After I had read all that is
written, I let Haug come to me in the Whitsun holidays. He brought with
him the translation I wished for of the _First Fargard of the Vendidad_;
and you can imagine my delight, when in Books XII. and XIII. he discovered
for me (purely linguistically) the two countries, the non-appearance of
which was the _only_ tenable counter-reason which opposed itself to the
intuition to which I had held fast since 1814—namely, that this document,
so ancient in its primitive elements, contained nothing less than the
history of the gradual invasion, founding of states, and peopling of Asia
by the Aryans. How could Kandahar and Kabul be missing if this were true?
Without the least _suspicion_ of this historical opinion, Haug proved to
me that they are not wanting. Petermann will make the whole clear in a
little map, such as I showed him. You will find it in the sixth volume.
Then he rejoiced my heart by translating some _single hymns of the
Rig-veda_, especially in Book VII., which I found threw great light on the
God-Consciousness, the faith in the moral government of the world. _He
comes to me_: from the 1st of August he is free in Bonn, and goes for the
Zend affairs to Paris, marries his bride in Ofterdingen, and comes here to
me on the 1st of October for _Mithridates_ and the Old Testament, the
printing of which begins in January, 1857, with the _Pentateuch_. With him
(in default of your personal presence) I have now gone through everything
at which I arrived with regard to the period of the entry of the Aryans
(4000 B. C.) in the Indus country (to which Sarasvatî does not belong—one
can as easily count seven as five rivers from the eastern branch of the
upper Indus to the west of the Satadru), and with regard to the difficult
questions of the connection of these migrations with Zoroaster. That is, I
_must_ place Zoroaster _before_ the emigration; on the march (from
5000-4000) the emigrants gradually break off. Three heresies, one after
another, are mentioned in the record itself. The not exterminated germs of
the nature-worship (with the adoration of fire) spring up again, but the
moral life remained. (1.) Therefore the Veda language is to me the
precipitate of the Old Bactrian (as the Edda language of the Old Norse).
(2.) The _Zend language_ is the second step from the Northern Old
Bactrian. (3.) The Sanskrit is one still further advanced from the
Southern Old Bactrian, or from the Veda language. (4.) All _Indian
literature_, except the Vedas, is in the New South Bactrian, already
become a learned language, which has been named the perfect or Sanskrit
language. The _epochs of the language_ are the three _great historical
catastrophes_.
A. _Kingdom in the region of the Indus._—4000-3000. The Veda language as a
living popular language.
B. _Second Period._—On the Sarasvatî and in the Duâb. The Veda tongue
becomes the learned language. Sanskrit is the _popular_ language,
3000-2000.
C. _Third Period._—Sanskrit _begins_ to be the learned language, at least
at the end.